Overall Member Rating

Valentin's Day Cruise out of San Juan!!

We set sail 10pm Eastern time on the Carnival Victory out of San Juan, Puerto Rico on Valentine's Day February 14, 2010. We had a wonderful time. We are a party of 19. Ages ranging from 1 years old - late 50's I would say.

Flew in to San Juan. Spent 2 days before hand. Gathered all the family up and met everyone at the port on the 14th.

My boyfriend and I stayed in a balcony stateroom. Beautiful views. A little more roomier than an inside cabin. Perfect for 2 or 3 people. 4 is pushing it. I think it's a little tight for the luggage and clothing with 4 people.

The ship's decor is definitely dated. The food was good. The dining room food I thought was excellent overall. If you didn't like something, our waitress Amy would bring it back and bring us something she recommended or we did like. Sushi bar is awesome on Deck 5. Only open from 5-8pm I believe. Lido buffet we only used for Breakfast. We liked to eat fast and utilize all our time on the islands. More
Normal breakfast foods. They had french toast every other day and pancakes every other day. They did have an omelette station. Lines would get long from 9am until about 10am I would say. We ate usually between 7:45 and 8:30am every day. We were up and about early.

Dining Room: Ate there only for dinner Lido Buffet: Ate there only for breakfast and snacks when we came back on board from the island. Sandwich shop: Ate there coming back from an Island for a late lunch/snack Sushi Bar: Ate there one night for dinner sat down at the 3 couches present.

The only thing I couldn't stand on this cruise was the availability to smoke at the casino and outside by the lido buffet deck. I am a non smoker nor can I stand when anyone smokes near me. Kill your own lungs NOT mine and my family's lungs. Some mornings we would have liked to eat at the lido buffet but outside by the pool and we could never. The smokers would be eating breakfast and enjoying the view, fresh air, and their cancer sticks.

Service was wonderful. Be polite and patient. There are thousands of people of this ship. What do u expect? Expect to wait on lines at the buffet. Dining is a process if you order more than one entree like we were doing in my party. We had 19 people. 3 tables side by side and to eat dinner usually took 2hrs start to finish.

Entertainment was good. The comedian was excellent. Percy Cruise the 2nd was his name. Pretty hysterical. The marriage game was a little lame. Much funnier on Royal Caribbean. Bingo is over priced as usual. $20 I think bought you 3 cards. The casino is hoppin at night which was a lot of fun. Some of the slot machines were paying out pretty well. Table games going good too.

Hot tubs full with kids. Cammon guys... that did annoy me. As an adult we like to relax sometimes without kids jumping in and out of the hot tubs. The pools are small little rectangles. We were at a port everyday or that would have annoyed me since they were over crowded most of the time and I saw only 2 of them.

Ice cream machines. There are 2 of them. 1 was out of service the whole time. The 2nd one by the pool was usually always out of sugar cones because the massive amount of ice cream the kids would go through every day. It was kinda annoying going for ice cream 4 times to find that you never got a cone. You look forward to the cone.

Karl with a K was the cruise director. A little cheesy but not as interactive as the cruise directors on Royal Caribbean. Less

Cabin review: 8348

Port and Shore Excursions

I set up another tour with this guy Edwin Lovell from Scenic Barbados tours. Nice guy. He set us up for lunch at his friends restaurant. Flying fish sandwiches. A local tour of the island. We went to this old church and a bunch of photo opportunities. Then he set us up for a snorkel on a glass bottom boat. The snorkeling was awesome once we got on the boat. We had to get on off the beach and the waves were wicked. You had to go about 4 feet deep and then climb up this old white crappy pool ladder onto this small glass bottom boat. My uncle almost got killed when the driver took off fast to avoid getting tumbled in the waves and beached but the captain never checked to see if other people were still getting on the boat! If you go with Edwin make sure u let him know you want a great Captain on a glass bottom boat. Everything is personalized. Whatever tours you want to do he will hook you up. If you want to just wing it... when you get off the ship you have to walk through these shops and then a car park area. Walk through it and there are literally about 50 taxi cab drivers in a circle like vultures begging for your business. You can work something out cheap. Good luck

The reason it's a 5+ is because of Simon. The island itself if about a 4. a lot of poverty and very 3rd world. Simon is a tour guide local guy I set my whole group up with. He is awesome. Gave us a very good tour of the island, trafalga falls, sulfur springs, local fruit tasting... everything you could possibly want. Very personalized. His web site is brand new

www.simonjoseph.ws/ tell him Jamie sent you. He will hook you up. You won't regret it.

St Kitts is amazing. I want to go back and get married here. We hung out at Frigate Bay. Beautiful white sand. Locals come around and give fresh aloe massages. I got a 45 minute massage for $20. Unbelievable. Where can you find that??? Water is warm and peaceful and relaxing. Perfect relaxation environment. Didn't see many tourists there and the locals left you alone.

We did Land and Sea to Soufiere through carnival. I think it was $89 each person. Food included. 1 drink is before the catamaran too. This tour is a little of everything. Tour around the island on air conditioned bus with a tour guide. You stop at a bunch of stops and then off to a catamaran where they give you lunch and rum punch and soda. They take you to this beach where you can snorkel. You have to rent the equipment if you don't have your own. The locals are waiting for you in canoes off the beach. They swim out right away before you are even docked with the ropes and start trying to sell you things right off the side of the catamaran. You will be amazed about how fast they are all over you. We didn't buy anything and we said no thanks and they left us alone. We went snorkeling. Saw a baby lobster, 2 fluke, and beautiful tropical fish. A lot of people stay on the catamaran during this time. You are on this beach for about 30-40minutes. Then off back to the ship.

Shoppers haven. Beautiful diamonds. About 100 jewelry shops. You get off the ship and have to take a 3 minute ferry ride across to see everything worth going there for. $6 round trip ride... unlimited for the day with that price. The ferry guys ask for a tip if you want to give one. If you want to shop for diamonds this is the place to buy them. They have absolutely stunning blue and yellow diamonds. So many stores to choose from. Choose wisely.

This day was overcast. We bought some blue diamonds and some conch fritters from this restaurant right in front of the ferry. If it's sunny out... you should go to this beach right in front of the ferry docking area. really close. I saw signs $15 gets you 2 beach chairs an umbrella and a bucket of 4 beers. Can't go wrong. Too bad it was overcast for us.

We went to Coki Beach. The taxi drivers outside the port are vultures. They don't like to come to a deal with pricing. We had 19 people and they wanted $9 per person each way. Fat chance. We found a cab driver that gave it to us for $6per person each way.

Rent snorkel off the beach from the locals. The reef is right off the beach.

For a relaxing white sand calm beach with no waves go to Meghan's Bay.

Please respect that this is a MODERATED community for people who absolutely LOVE cruise travel or want to learn about cruise travel.

Registration to Cruise Critic's Cruise Community is free! We require that you use a valid e-mail address. You will receive an e-mail asking you to verify your e-mail address before you are allowed to login and post on the boards. Again, please disable your spamblocking or verification software so that you receive our activation e-mail. Also, as a member of Cruise Critic you will receive copies of our weekly newsletter plus our "Cruise Sails" and one "Member Offer" mailing. Should you not want to continue to receive these e-mailings, simply unsubscribe by following the directions in the newsletter. By agreeing to become a member, you are agreeing to receipt of our newsletters.

Additionally, we do insist that you abide by the rules and policies detailed at this link: Community Guidelines.

This is a moderated Community. If you do not agree with the terms and conditions of this Web site and do not wish to be bound by them, please do not use this Web site or continue the registration process. Cruise Critic reserves the right to remove any content in its sole discretion. Additionally, if you violate our Community Guidelines you may lose your posting privileges -- permanently -- without warning. By continuing the registration you are agreeing to the terms

These are moderated message boards. What this means is that we do our best to remove all objectionable messages from the boards. It also means that you cannot say whatever you'd like on the forums. If you are looking for an "anything goes" setting, Cruise Critic might not be the place for you. Understand, too, that our community is comprised of folks who LOVE to cruise. It therefore stands to reason that they will have a favorite cruise line or port of call -- in other words, they are "fans" and will sometimes take offense when a brand new member has arrived on the scene to bash a cruise line.

Keep in mind that we do not prescreen posts so there may be a period of time when an inappropriate post is visible. Please use the Report A Post icon located in the UPPER right hand corner of each posting if you wish to report a violation of our Community Guidelines. All messages express the views of the author, and neither the owners of Cruise Critic Message Board Forums, nor Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd. (developers of vBulletin) will be held responsible for the content of any message.

By agreeing to these rules, you warrant that you will not post any messages that are obscene, vulgar, sexually-orientated, hateful, threatening, are in violation of our Community Guidelines or otherwise violative of any laws.

Cruise Critic reserves to right to remove, edit, move or close any thread (discussion) for any reason from the forums without warning. or notification to the Community. Additionally, we also reserve the right to deny posting privileges to any member at our sole discretion.

You hereby grant Cruise Critic the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display any message posted in our message board community (in whole or in part) worldwide and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media or technology now known or later developed.

Our mission is to provide a haven on the Internet free of harassment and advertising for our community members' enjoyment. Any company or person(s) that interfere with that mission risk losing their posting privileges.

If you have any questions about how our community is moderated, please address them to our Community Manager via e-mail at community@cruisecritic.com. Please do not post on the boards.